If we learned anything at all from “Avatar,” it’s that insulting the intelligence of the audience is no guarantee of a film’s downfall. Which is good news for “A Wedding Invitation,” a Pan-Asian romantic melodrama that virtually pokes you in the eye with its fakery. After going to the trouble of hiring attractive stars, placing them in glossy locations and photographing everything with the slickness of a BP public relations campaign, the South Korean director Oh Ki-hwan sacrifices all to a story (by Qin Haiyan) less grounded in reality than a convention of alien abductees.

At the center of the artifice are QiaoQiao (Bai Baihe) and LiXing (Eddie Peng), who are clearly perfect for each other — he makes soup, she makes soup bowls — but nevertheless must part. QiaoQiao wants a diamond and a designer wedding dress — cue product placement — so off she goes to Shanghai to become a tableware designer while he remains in Beijing to pursue a career as a chef. In five years, assuming that LiXing has climbed a tax bracket or two, they will marry.

As if conducting a seminar on manipulation, the film’s highly competent leads navigate a screenplay based entirely on lies, deception and trickery. This ought to be fun, but with a heroine who’s a materialistic, judgmental horror, we are given few reasons to smile — or to care when the film abruptly collapses into unearned weepie territory.

Ms. Bai has already proved mastery of similar, though much better, material with “Love Is Not Blind,” but here she’s trapped in a character without a core. QiaoQiao may carry Band-Aids wherever she goes, but it will take more than sticky strips of fabric to save this pretty, empty misfire.